Philadelphians have long had a love–hate relationship with the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a one-mile axis that runs from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It may be leafy and lined with cultural landmarks, but its eight traffic lanes make it difficult to cross on foot, and it suffers from patches of undeveloped land — not to mention a dearth of places to stop for a drink. Around 2012, a few new parks, cafés and attractions opened, including the relocated and expanded Barnes Foundation, an elegant limestone rectangle from Tod Williams Billie Tsien set inside a formal landscape by OLIN. But the move for “more park, less way” has languished since then.
Now, on the other side of the boulevard, celebrated plantsman...
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